Its evidence: a blazing speech by Cruz during a 2010 Fourth of July in Austin. At the speech, Cruz accused Harvard Law School of housing a dozen Communist on its faculty, the article said. (Cruz attended Harvard law between 1992 and 1995.)

He also made a similar accusation during a “Defending American Dream” conference held by the conservative political organization, Americans for Prosperity. There, Cruz launched into attacking Obama as the “most radical” president “ever to occupy the office,” the article said. He also declared Obama, who also attended Harvard, would have made a good president of the school because at the time of his schooling, there were fewer Republicans than Communists on the faculty, including a handful who held Marxist beliefs and supported overthrowing the government.

Though a Cruz spokesman declined to comment on the comments, the New Yorker interviewed Charles Fried, a former law school professor of the Texas senator and a former Reagan Administration Solicitor General. Fried, a prominent legal conservative, was puzzled at the comments and felt Cruz might have “gotten his facts wrong.” Despite a few “radical” faculty members, he said, he doubted anyone held full-fledged Communist believes, admitting he’d never kept tabs on such political leanings.